Today, Lenovo™ announced, in partnership with Google®, the Lenovo Mirage Camera with Daydream, a powerful new tool that lets you capture and relive memories like you’re really in the moment. The Lenovo Mirage Camera is a VR camera that simplifies creating virtual reality content with easy video or image capture and wireless upload to your personal Google Photos™ and YouTube™ account. VR180 eliminates the need for specialized virtual reality videography skills and professional camera gear to shoot immersive 3D VR videos and photos. Everyday users and digital storytellers can now create, produce and share immersive content without expending extra effort or equipment—just point, shoot, relive and share.

Launching the Lenovo Mirage Solo and Lenovo Mirage Camera with Daydream together reaffirms our commitment to designing products that are different for the sake of being better. Together, the Lenovo Mirage Camera and Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream complement each other for users interested in immersive VR but who want affordable prices, high-quality content and simple set-up.

A compact point-and-shoot camera, the Lenovo Mirage Camera, slips right into your pocket and supports YouTube’s new VR180 video format. Its dual 13MP fisheye cameras achieve depth in image and video by capturing the same images at slightly different angles to form a 3D effect, in which near objects look near, while far objects appear far. The two lenses also offer a 180 x 180-degree field of view to let you see more.

Finally, we built the Lenovo Mirage Camera at a price for mainstream consumers; democratizing VR by proving you don’t need expensive equipment or computers to make VR.

Experience Once-in-a-Lifetime—on Demand

“You had to be there.”

Until now, reliving experiences through 2D videos and photos just isn’t the same as the real thing. But what if you could perfectly capture the feeling of “being there”? The Lenovo Mirage Camera lets you share your once-in-a-lifetime moments with friends, so they can see what you saw in exactly the same lifelike clarity and feel what you experienced first-hand.

Relive those precious moments with family as if you were there again, replaying your daughter’s game-winning goal or recapturing that feeling when your dad unwrapped the perfect birthday gift. The excitement of a live concert or game, the majesty of the Rocky Mountains or the razzle-dazzle of a street performance—all can be captured, relived and shared.

Just Point and Shoot

Just point and shoot. We designed the Lenovo Mirage Camera for simplicity with just three buttons—power, shutter and function. Toggle between three modes: photo, video and live broadcasting.

You can even pair with your smartphone via Wi-Fi Direct. Download the VR180 app by Google to make your phone’s screen act as a viewfinder, letting you preview all your photos and videos. About the size of a smartphone and weighing just 139 grams, the Lenovo Mirage Camera fits into small pockets so it travels where you do.

VR180 Made Simple

VR180 videos act exactly like standard 2D videos in YouTube, Google Photos and companion apps—meaning you can watch the same ultra-high-resolution 4K video on your phone, tablet or PC—all without needing a headset. But owning a VR headset such as a Google Cardboard™ or the Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream adds the immersion element to your viewing experience and encourages you to watch again and again.

And like 2D videos, VR180 videos can also be edited with familiar and popular video editing software. You can work with Adobe® Premiere® Pro to edit VR180 videos in post-production without having to learn and adopt different formats or using specialized hardware to stitch footage.

Instantaneous Sharing

You can share instantly. We integrated the Lenovo Mirage Camera tightly with Google Photos and YouTube. While you can store your content on the camera’s 16GB1 on-board eMMC (or use an optional microSD card for up to 128GB of additional storage), all content can also be uploaded to Google Photos. You can also upload live broadcasts and videos to your YouTube VR account, thanks to the camera’s Wi-Fi - no smartphone required.

The device houses the Qualcomm® Connected Camera Platform with a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 626 SoC which features integrated high-quality dual cameras and powerful processing with built-in Wi-Fi and even an integrated X9 LTE cellular modem in the LTE version, 2GB of RAM, USB Type-C charging and a slot for a removable battery. The camera offers up to two hours of continuous usage for high-resolution video recording.2

And in addition to the Lenovo Mirage Camera, we’re also launching two more devices today in collaboration with Google and Qualcomm to bring immersive, life-like experiences to our customers:

Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream is the world’s first standalone Daydream VR headset, matching simplicity with immersion to bring you the next generation of virtual reality;
Lenovo Smart Display features the Google Assistant built into a vibrant full HD touchscreen display.

The Mirage Camera is expected to be available beginning in the second quarter this year.

Lenovo Mirage provides pretty good photo and video quality. The lens is sharp except near the edges where there is a sudden drop in sharpness, and greater chromatic aberration. The dynamic range is above average compared to consumer 360 cameras. I also like the natural-looking colors and contrast of the photos and videos.

The Mirage has very simple controls and it’s easy to connect it with a smartphone (just launch the app and turn on the camera). The bigger concern is that shooting VR180 is a little more challenging with several rules to avoid viewer discomfort. It’s made a little harder for casual shooters because there’s no LCD screen, and the live preview on the phone isn’t representative of what you would see in VR view. But you can get used to shooting it.

Viewing and sharing photos and videos is simple because there is no need to stitch photos or videos. However, there is still very little support for sharing VR180, and there is no photo or video editor yet. My understanding is that there will be a plugin for VR180 editing on Adobe Premiere but what we really need is a free or low cost VR180 editing option to unlock the full potential of this exciting new medium.